“서발턴은 미래를 상상할 수 있을까?”: 아미타브 고쉬의 『캘커타 염색체』 분석
“Can the Subaltern Imagine the Future?”: An Analysis of Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome
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This paper examines Amitav Ghosh’s science fiction The Calcutta Chromosome from the perspective of postcolonial science fiction, which functions as an effective genre for Ghosh to deal with the postcolonial history of colonial science. Pulling together the intersecting strands, the novel consists of three narrative layers: the near future in New York; 1990s in Calcutta, India; the late nineteenth century in India. Along with exact citations from the Memoirs of Ronald Ross, a winner of the 1902 Nobel Prize for Medicine, this novels pays particular attention to the scientific trajectories of malaria research in British India. Interweaving the ‘real’ story of Ross’s with his own imaginative stories, Ghosh ‘imagines’ that unlike the official Western history of malaria research, the seemingly uneducated “fringe people” of Indian assistants actually manipulated Ross’s research for their own quest for immortality, the discovery of “Calcutta Chromosome.” Ghosh implies that the fortuitous discoveries by “the Angel of Fate” were actually the products of the secret indigenous group. Juxtaposing conventional Western science with indigenous counter-science, Ghosh challenges the exclusiveness of Western science discourses and foregrounds the spiritual, esoteric, and cult counter-science. As Deleuze and Guattari suggest through the comparison between the “State sciences” and the “nomad (minor) sciences,” the “eccentric and initiatory” counter-science exerts pressure on and intervenes in the mainstream science. Providing an affirmative answer to the question of “Can the subaltern imagine the future?” Ghosh argues that a responsibility to the future is embedded in the past, which explains why the writer turns back to the colonial period in his novel.
Abstract
This paper examines Amitav Ghosh’s science fiction The Calcutta Chromosome from the perspective of postcolonial science fiction, which functions as an effective genre for Ghosh to deal with the postcolonial history of colonial science. Pulling together the intersecting strands, the novel consists of three narrative layers: the near future in New York; 1990s in Calcutta, India; the late nineteenth century in India. Along with exact citations from the Memoirs of Ronald Ross, a winner of the 1902 Nobel Prize for Medicine, this novels pays particular attention to the scientific trajectories of malaria research in British India. Interweaving the ‘real’ story of Ross’s with his own imaginative stories, Ghosh ‘imagines’ that unlike the official Western history of malaria research, the seemingly uneducated “fringe people” of Indian assistants actually manipulated Ross’s research for their own quest for immortality, the discovery of “Calcutta Chromosome.” Ghosh implies that the fortuitous discoveries by “the Angel of Fate” were actually the products of the secret indigenous group. Juxtaposing conventional Western science with indigenous counter-science, Ghosh challenges the exclusiveness of Western science discourses and foregrounds the spiritual, esoteric, and cult counter-science. As Deleuze and Guattari suggest through the comparison between the “State sciences” and the “nomad (minor) sciences,” the “eccentric and initiatory” counter-science exerts pressure on and intervenes in the mainstream science. Providing an affirmative answer to the question of “Can the subaltern imagine the future?” Ghosh argues that a responsibility to the future is embedded in the past, which explains why the writer turns back to the colonial period in his novel.
참고문헌 (25)
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